One Israeli, however, has focused his efforts on a mind-body approach. Alex Kerten says his gyro-kinetic* program of martial arts, movement and music has helped hundreds of PD patients from Israel and abroad over the past 20 years to slow the progression and ease symptoms of this disorder of the brain’s muscle-movement control areas.

As many as 10 million people worldwide suffer the tremors, impaired balance and rigidity associated with PD, which has no cure. Drugs prescribed to lessen the symptoms often cause unpleasant side effects.

“I don’t know what is worse: Parkinson’s or the cocktail of medications people receive to treat it,” says Kerten from his Gyro-Kinetics Center in Herzliya. “They get addicted to the drugs and need medication for its side effects.”

“Our biochemistry and our psychology start to change as we learn to control our way of thinking.”

Kerten’s approach targets the physiology of behavior to provide a placebo effect on symptoms as a complement to medications and to reduce the amount of medication needed.

“The physiology of behavior means that our behavior patterns are based on how our nervous system reacts to situations. Our biochemistry and our psychology start to change as we learn to control our way of thinking. They begin to interact through body/mind awareness and language, and when they do that, we begin to see a change in our physiology. And that’s when we begin to feel better.”

Kerten says he gets thousands of mails from people across the world interested in his method and has treated people at his Israeli clinic from Australia, the US, UK and France. He long felt that a how-to book would enable him to reach a greater audience with the message that “there is an option.”

The project came together when Michael Wiese, head of American publishing company Divine Arts, came to Kerten for treatment and then offered to publish his book. David Brinn, managing editor of The Jerusalem Post and founding editorial director of ISRAEL21c, agreed to co-write Goodbye Parkinson’s, Hello Life!:The Gyro-Kinetic Method for Eliminating Symptoms and Reclaiming Your Good Health. It is scheduled for a January 2016 release on Amazon.

Though there is scientific evidence that movement and music open up new pathways in the neural networks and make them more efficient, the 70-year-old Kerten is not a scientist and has no medical degree.

He studied martial arts, structuring and healing movement, as well as somatic exploration and movement education, prior to working with Parkinson’s patients for four years at Reuth Hospital in Tel Aviv and later teaching at the Maccabi Health Institute in Israel before opening his private practice.

“Having seven black belts in martial arts is the only ‘diploma’ I need, and my clients provide all the proof I need,” he tells ISRAEL21c. “They’re really rehabilitating and treating themselves.”

The first time Kerten meets a client, he uses observation and questions to ascertain the level of disease and its physical and psychological effects.

“In many cases the effect of the shock over having Parkinson’s is bigger than the Parkinson’s itself,” he says. “The most important thing is I try to see what medications they have gotten and how their behavior patterns have limited or entered their systems.”

Two phenomena he often sees are incorrect breathing, which harms the diaphragm and causes speech difficulties, and less usage of the hands because of trembling, which he says leads to memory problems.

“By seeing where their limits are in movement and rhythm, I tell them what we have to improve and then I enter into systematic, methodic work. I have built four basic exercises that answer most of the problems and harmonize the body’s systems.”

He explains that when people have internalized the message that their body is going to get worse over time, the autonomic nervous system goes into survival mode and the disease becomes chronic.

“We teach people to communicate with themselves so as not to pass over messages that are not correct. And with time, something very interesting happens: all the systems become entrained toward better health.”

Most clients come to his clinic twice a week for four or five months, and then occasionally for maintenance. He prefers to work with people who have recently been diagnosed, before they have become dependent on medications.

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Abigail Klein Leichman is a writer and associate editor at ISRAEL21c. Prior to moving to Israel in 2007, she was a specialty writer and copy editor at a major daily newspaper in New Jersey and has freelanced for a variety of newspapers and periodicals since 1984.